Welcome to the January 2025 Full Moon Cosmic Weather Forecast by Curtis Lang with Jane Sherry! Here in rural suburban Winston Salem, we are having a Northeastern style winter, with temperatures ranging from the teens to the low forties week after week. It's frosty in the mornings with occasional snow/slush/ice/rain events.
Frosty December Sunrise, Winston Salem, December 2024, photo by Curtis Lang
People in North Carolina can't navigate snow and ice events very well. They are just not accustomed to this kind of winter weather so the number of traffic accidents increases exponentially when we get any measurable ice and snow on the roads. Schools close and people stay off the streets when they can.
Friday, as wet snow fell on farms in our hilly patch of rural suburbia, it took us nearly an hour to make the normally 15 minute trip home from our acupuncturist.
We saw numerous cars that had skidded off the road as we drove, and had to make a tight U-turn among stalled cars when a kindly fellow opened his window while passing in the other direction to let us know that a large truck had jack-knifed across the road at the bottom of the hill and around the bend a quarter of a mile ahead.
As we brace for another ten days of this extreme winter fun, Los Angeles is burning. Some of our friends have had to evacuate already, and several more relatives and friends are in harm's way.
As of January 9th, we've seen "more than 20 square miles razed to the ground in less than 48 hours" in Los Angeles, as a result of wildfires fueled by 100 mile per hour Santa Ana winds blowing embers from the mountains through the parched city, which has seen no rain for 300 days.
The result? A hurricane of fire!
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California issues warnings for this magnitude of destructive Santa Ana wind fueled fires approximately once every three to five years on average, but there have been three such incidents during this year's fire season, fueled by unprecedented seasonal drought and extreme wind in Los Angeles and elsewhere in Southern California.
"Scientists at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have put the fire down to a global pattern of what they're calling 'hydroclimate whiplash' – rapid swings between intensely wet and dangerously dry weather," according to the Daily Mail, a London newspaper.
Smoke from a wildfire at Los Angeles on January 7, 2025
NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025) processed by the European Space Agency., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
As of midafternoon on Saturday, January 12th, there has been an estimated $150 billion worth of damage from the wildfires, and the largest fires are at 10-15% containment.
We have family and friends in Los Angeles who have evacuated successfully, so this is the second time in three months that a $50+ billion natural disaster has hit our friends and family members -- first in Asheville, now in LA.
Many people say this is our new normal. But this new normal is not a steady state. There is no upper limit to the global warming that our ever increasing use of fossil fuels will precipitate worldwide.
Climate scientists are stunned by the rapidly accelerating warming trends in oceans and across the surface of the earth. Their models did not predict the increasingly ferocious extreme weather events we are experiencing around the world would happen in their lifetimes.
In short, we ain't seen nothin' yet.
Will international agreements to reach NetZero by 2050 save us from global apocalypse? The Paris Agreement of 2015 requires a 43% reduction in global greenhouse emissions by 2030 to meet NetZero 2050 goals. Based on national plans in effect in November 2024, the global decrease of greenhouse gas emissions is set to be 2.6% if all countries meet their stated goals, according to UN Climate Action.
"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire." -- Robert Frost
Fire Tornado
January 2025 Cosmic Weather Forecast
We are now in the most challenging period of the year 2025, astrologically speaking. The first few months of the year are chaotic, astrologically, but the second half of the year should provide us with a more supportive set of Cosmic Weather patterns.
As we noted in December's Full Moon newsletter, "Jupiter in Gemini will be square Saturn in Pisces, beginning on Christmas Eve. This is part of a three part series of squares. The next will be in June 2025, and the final square will be in August of next year."
This tense alignment creates a clash of planetary Titans in mutable signs, an energy signature that can manifest as multiple minor (or major) issues that seemingly come out of nowhere, derailing us and delaying our plans while we attempt to deal with the unexpected problems we encounter. Circumstances beyond our control will demand our attention.
We are challenged for the next few months to maintain our equilibrium.
Jupiter pushes us to expand the range of our activities and the scope of our desires and Saturn restricts us when we attempt to manifest our dreams and desires by pushing out energy, or when we try to do too much too fast.
Neither do we want to overcompensate in Saturn's direction by moving too slowly to do that which must be done, or to do too little, or to act too late when action is essential.
To further complicate our situation this month, we continue to suffer from the energetic stimulation of retrograde Mars in the last degrees of Cancer.
Mars will be retrograde until February 23rd.
Needless to say, with Mars in the sign of its detriment, we may find it hard to focus our energy on our most important goals in life.
This aspect will challenge us to exert all our will forces if we are to successfully progress on our path of Spirit or to attain our material goals in life.
See page for author, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
To further complicate the picture, Mars in retrograde Cancer is opposed to Pluto in the first degree of Aquarius.
We know this energy signature which first manifested in early November. At that time I predicted further political polarization in societies around the world along with escalation in the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
This energy signature is also symbolic of bullying, berserkers and violence born of mental instability.
The New Year's Day cybertruck attack on the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, carried out by a highly decorated Green Beret combat veteran named Matthew Livelsberger, which saw the cybertruck explode in a fireball that did no significant damage to the hotel, fits the symbolism of Mars opposing Pluto which can manifest as uncontrollable rage and explosive attacks of all kinds.
The New Year's Day terror attack in the French Quarter of New Orleans, carried out by a US Army veteran who drove a truck into massed holiday crowds, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens more, is another example of the manifestation of incendiary Mars/Pluto opposition insanity.
Runaway massive Mars-ruled wildfires resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, which are sourced in the deep Plutonic underworld beneath the Earth's crust, could easily be seen as another manifestation of this profoundly conflicted energy.
On a personal level, we must remain aware that it is all too easy to fly off the handle in the face of mounting frustrations and stress during the period of retrograde Mars opposing Pluto.
Astrologers traditionally equate Mars in Cancer with difficulties controlling the flow of one's energy, problems focusing and channeling the will forces, and an inability to manifest our desired goals in life.
We can expect to see angry, frustrated outbursts all around us, and we may find ourselves venting more than expected.
Cracheur de feu
CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
The challenge is to let the anger go.
The anger is not our true nature or the true nature of those who exasperate or confront us.
The anger is simply like clouds in the sky, temporarily blocking the Sun.
This too shall pass, and all shall be well.
All manner of things shall be well in our lives.
Sun behind clouds at sunset
2025 Cosmic Weather Preview
Astrologically, the first few chaotic months of 2025 will mirror major long cycle transitions in the outer planets, from the point of view of observers on planet Earth.
By the end of autumn, all the outer planets will have changed signs from the 2024 status quo, and the last half of 2025 will be relatively free of incendiary planetary aspects.
By the end of the year, we will become aware that a new very long term cycle in human consciousness is dawning for us all.
Pluto moved from Capricorn to Aquarius in November 2024.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will all change signs during the short span of time between May and September.
Constellation of Aquarius, from a Book of Hours, Italy, circa 1475
The last time this multiple outer planet transition occurred was 300 years ago.
We will be moving from a long cycle of outer planets in Earth and Water signs, into a long cycle with outer planets in fire and air signs.
The Earth/Water cycle coincided with the Industrial Revolution, which fueled the maritime conquest of the entire planet by Imperial powers using the stored energy locked in fossil fuels found deep within the Earth.
This cycle also saw the rise and ascendance of the Enlightenment values of rational materialism.
Reductionist views of nature and of the human psyche banished first God, then human consciousness itself to the realms of fantasy and religious fundamentalism, along with "illusions" of free will.
In this view, the Universe was and is thought to operate as a clockwork mechanism, or, more recently as a piece of computer software, created through a series of random sequences of events and unfolding to no inner purpose whatsoever.
Tarot Trump XX, The Aeon, Thoth Tarot
The next long term cycle of outer planet placements in Fire and Air signs are thought by many astrologers to indicate a dawning of higher human consciousness, along with an emerging awareness of subtle energy fields as the primary building blocks of the Universe, and the templates for biological development and growth.
In the Sacred Tarot, Trump XX, called The Aeon in the Thoth Tarot deck created by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris, represents the dawning of a novel, expanded human consciousness and symbolizes a pathway from rational materialism to a more nuanced understanding of Universal realities.
Many students of the Tarot have seen The Aeon card as a symbol of the dawning of the New Age of the Air sign Aquarius.
The Aeon illustrates the figure of the Egyptian Hawk Headed Sun God Horus, with the Hebrew letter Shin, symbolizing Fire or Spirit, displayed prominently at the bottom of the figure.
The path of Shin, aka, The Aeon, is a path known to Kabbalists as the Trial by Fire.
This path leads from Malkuth, the bottom Sephiroth of the Tree of Life, upwards to Hod, the 8th Sephiroth of Mercurial Intelligence and Understanding.
Tree of Life Illustration, Using The Queen Scale of Colour of the Golden Dawn tradition
(Reference: Crowley's LIBER 777)
Eric.J.Hebert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The creators of the Thoth Tarot intended to impart some esoteric knowledge about the path humanity will be traveling during the transition from the waning Age of Pisces, into the dawning Age of Aquarius, a transitional phase which we can now all see will feature a global trial by fire precipitated by accelerating climate change.
The Seiphiroth known as Malkuth represents the everyday consciousness of humanity, which focuses solely on material realities, and is constrained by identification with the egoistic personality.
As we ascend in conscious awareness along the path of Shin, the path of The Aeon, we begin to leave these restrictions behind.
When we reach Hod, at the end of the path of trial by fire, we enter into a Mercurial realm of Higher Mind, freed of the constraints of the rational mind, materialist preconceptions and egoistic personality.
Then we are free to explore Higher Worlds.
The power of the path of Shin is revealed by spiritual practices that require transcendence of our fixation upon physical realities and physical comfort.
The path of Shin is the path of the renunciant.
Sadhu Meditating, Pashupatinath Temple, Kathmandu, Nepal
In short the path of Shin is a path of suffering, designed to release us from our desires for physical comforts and physical pleasures so we may attain a higher consciousness.
It is becoming clear that humanity in the 21st Century has indeed embarked upon an extended journey on the path of Shin, a trial by fire, a global existential crisis that will force suffering humanity to transcend its Piscean Age delusions, its fixation on rational materialism, and its incessant hunger for more and more physical gratifications, and more and more power exercised over weaker humans and over Mother Nature herself.
Humanity as a whole will have to renounce the creature comforts provided by our over-reliance on fossil fuels to support our consumerist lifestyles if we are to survive as a global civilization.
And if we do not, the path of Fire and Spirit will force us to release our attachment to our current Hydrocarbon Fueled Civilization of Conspicuous Consumption and Imperialist Dominator Culture.
The longer we wait to voluntarily relinquish our unsustainable lifestyles, the more mass suffering, destruction and death the world will see.
That is the lesson of the Path of The Aeon for us today.
Temperature Rises, 1940-Present, courtesy NASA
There is as yet no visible path toward a sustainable energy fueled civilization that will avoid increasingly deadly resource wars, or increased use of fossil fuels during the decades long "transition" to green energy.
There is "No sign’ of promised fossil fuel transition as emissions hit new high", according to a headline in the UK Guardian newspaper. “There is a feeling that a peak in global fossil CO2 emissions is imminent, but it remains elusive,” said Dr Glen Peters, at the Center for International Climate Research. “The world continually finds ways to burn ever more fossil fuels.”
Only renunciation, shared sacrifice, compassion for our fellow human beings, and a renewed reverence for the web of life and Gaia herself can avoid a multi-billion person reduction in current global populations.
I think very few people are ready to experience that reality.
Very few can even imagine such a possibility at all.
Yet that unimaginable global catastrophe is now the default setting for humanity, the highest probability outcome for us all.
Will the ongoing slow-motion climate catastrophe trigger a round of resource wars between power hungry major powers, along with a war of all against all mentality among the general populace, or will humans find a way to cooperate, as individuals, and on a global scale, in order to mitigate the dire consequences of our current hydrocarbon based global capitalist civilization?
"Predicting ever more extreme weather, famine, and social collapse around the globe, high-level experts like former CIA director James Woolsey and former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan outline a chilling vision of endemic violence and “militarized adaptation” to disaster," reports Sam Ross-Brown for The Utne Reader. "As hunger and disease turn to conflict in the Global South, planners inside and outside the Pentagon are preparing to shut borders, control population movements, and intensify U.S. intervention abroad."
"The plans go back to 2004, when the Department of Defense funded a study on how climate change would impact national security," Ross-Brown explains. "The results, compiled by security experts at the Global Business Network, evoke a Hobbesian landscape in which desperation and dislocation fuel permanent worldwide conflict. 'Once again, warfare would define human life,' the authors ominously warn.
Sadly, creating an armed lifeboat in the United States while pursuing belligerent, neo-Imperialist policies designed to secure resources in a world of constant war will only accelerate the onset of increasingly unlivable extreme weather events precipitated by CO2 induced climate change.
It is crystal clear today that only an end to the wars that are pitting nation against nation, tribe against tribe, religion against religion, race against race, and class against class can reduce global emissions and usher in a new era of global co-operation to mitigate the unimaginable suffering that is unfolding now, much sooner than anyone expects.
As an added bonus, a global peace economy would immediately reduce global emissions by 5.5%, the amount the world's military machines contribute to global warming every year. If the world's military forces were a country, their emissions would nearly equal India's current output.
That would be a huge win! Unfortunately there is no political party or politician in America who would support peace and global co-operation, so we must prepare for the Pentagon's worst case scenario.
January 2025 Cosmic Weather Forecast
The Full Moon is conjunct Mars in Cancer, adding to the energy of the combustible Mars/Pluto opposition.
Mars is indeed the star of the stellar show this month, forming the focal point of a powerful "funnel" pattern of planets.
Mars (and the Moon) sit together in isolation in this chart, with all the other planets in a group more or less opposite, with two or more of those other planets in conjunction.
The Mars focused "funnel" pattern indicates that the conscious awareness and control of powerful Mars energies will be crucial for all of us this month.
It's time to call forth our inner spiritual warrior, summon our Mars ruled will forces, silence our monkey mind, and quiet our overly emotional reactions to provocative events unfolding in our world.
Only in this way can we achieve the inner stability and psychic equilibrium that will enable us to progress on our path of Spirit towards our most cherished spiritual and material goals.
There are also positive aspects this Full Moon week.
Mars in Cancer is in a strong trine this Full Moon with Neptune in Pisces, which is an extremely favorable aspect for energy healing work, and for spiritual practices in general.
Now is the time to focus your power and open yourself to becoming a channel for Higher Mind and Higher Self so that you may become a potent instrument for the manifestation of healing in your own life and in the lives of all those around you.
Uranus with rings, Webb telescope photograph, courtesy NASA
The Full Moon is sextile Uranus in Taurus and the Sun trines Uranus, signaling a golden opportunity to achieve emotional breakthroughs, and discard outworn patterns of reactive emotional behavior that keep us locked into unhelpful repetitive life scripts.
Jupiter in Gemini continues to square Saturn in Pisces, indicating an environment that challenges our ability to manifest our hopes and dreams.
It is important at such a time to be realistic in our ambitions without aiming too low and robbing ourselves of opportunities for material and spiritual progress.
So stay strong but don't over reach.
Be patient and persistent and keep your highest goals in mind, because the Cosmic Weather patterns will soon shift, and more conducive conditions will prevail.
By the last week of January, the stormy energy signature of this month's Full Moon in Cancer will abate, and a more supportive, flowing set of planetary patterns will provide much needed emotional, mental and physical relief from this month's extremely tense aspects.
Song of Shambhala, Oil Painting by Nicholas Roerich
Nicholas Roerich , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In closing, I would like to share a message I received a while ago during meditation.
"If human civilization expects to survive global warming, we are going to have to learn to modify our patterns of consumption for the greater good.
"We are going to have to learn to share.
"One of the major sources of karma on planet Earth involves wasting energy.
"As you already know, there are three main areas of life in which those being schooled on planet Earth need remedial instruction, three main areas in which virtually all souls who incarnate on this planet must learn to achieve a much greater degree of responsibility and balance than they have demonstrated in past incarnations.
"These three areas are power, sex and money.
"Power, sex and money are all expressions of human life force energy as it manifests in group situations.
In past incarnations, human beings have abused power, misused the sacred sexual energy, and greedily amassed fortunes while the masses suffer and even starve.
Mammon and His Slave
Wood engraving, published by Johann Jacob Weber, Leipzig, circa 1896
Sascha Schneider , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
"Ponder the myriad ways in which human beings waste their own power.
"The powerful among us, our leaders, appear more concerned with their own personal well-being than with the well-being of the communities they have been empowered to oversee, for the greater good of all concerned.
"Those human beings with an innate, powerful sexual magnetism have wasted their Universal Life Force energy in the pursuit of sexual pleasures when it could have been sublimated to some degree, raised to the higher chakras, and used as the key to unlock the door to Higher Worlds.
"Nor for the most part have those endowed with a superfluity of sexual energies channeled those energies into creative expression or spiritual partnership.
"Thus much of humanity's sexual energy, which could be used to help accelerate humanity's spiritual growth, is wasted on the pursuit of sensation.
"The wealthy among us live in a world of unrelenting and continuous warfare, the war of all against all. In that world of ruthless Darwinian competition, all commerce, all finance, all politics, all human interaction, is defined by its monetary value, and all human interactions become monetary transactions.
Arms Race, Cartoon from Puck Magazine, Public Domain
"In each transaction there is a winner and a loser.
"The focus of life becomes winning and the avoidance of loss.
"The end result is that the wealthy use their wealth to consolidate their power over the society as a whole so as to maximize their own ability to increase their wealth, at the expense of everyone else in society.
"This creates war among nations, war among corporations, and war between economic classes.
"War is in many ways the quintessential waste of energy.
"You can see the human tendency to waste energy in every aspect of the lifestyle of the most 'advanced' human societies today.
"Ponder the waste you see around you during the year 2025.
Woman Picking Waste on a Dumpsite
Bibiire1, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
"Like the vast majority of souls currently incarnating on Earth, one of your Soul tasks in this lifetime is to see and feel the results of a mass dramatization of energy waste."
We are at a point of choice as human beings, individually and collectively.
Let us search our souls, open our hearts, clear our minds, and fearlessly confront our karma.
In this way we can begin to find our way forward on our path of Spirit.
Jane and Curtis Under the Cawtalpa Tree, Old Salem, NC
Jane and I affirm that we all receive the grace and guidance we require this Full Moon week to achieve all our loftiest spiritual and material goals.
Love and Light and Reiki Blessings to one and all!
We thank you for having the courage to continue to read our Cosmic Weather Forecasts during the ongoing collapse of our 21st Century disaster capitalist global hydrocarbon fueled civilization.
We thank you for your support, your blessings, your attention to our persistent, quiet voice.
Meditation Moment: Thanks by W.S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
W.S. Merwin, Sharon Olds in Ezra Pound's birth house, Hailey, Idaho.
The original uploader was Seedsman at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
